


Cockroach Vignette #4: Came Back Haunted

by BigSciencyBrain



Series: Refuge [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, I lied about not writing more vignettes, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 02:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigSciencyBrain/pseuds/BigSciencyBrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki is not always alone in his prison cell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cockroach Vignette #4: Came Back Haunted

“What are you reading?” Steve asked.

Loki glanced up from his book. “You would call them fairytales.”

“Like Snow White?” Steve rolled onto his back, lacing his hands behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. “Read to me.”

Turning the page, Loki feigned a long-suffering sigh before he began to real aloud. They were old tales; tales of Asgard’s past before Odin had brought Loki home as a spoil of war and forever tarnished his own legacy. Loki didn’t mention any of that, he simply read the words as they were on the page.

“I wish I could touch you,” Steve said suddenly, interrupting Loki’s narration. “I wish we could make love.”

Loki closed his eyes for a moment. “Steve.”

“I know.” Steve nodded toward the faint golden glow of the prison walls. “We have an audience.” His grin was wide and to anyone else, it would’ve looked completely innocent. But Loki knew better. Even the virtuous Captain America had a mischievous streak.

He felt a ripple of power and closed the book. In a moment, the illusion of Steve disappeared in a shimmer of light.

“Who were you talking to?” Frigga asked.

Loki turned slowly, getting up from the bed to face the image of the Queen of Asgard. “It doesn’t matter.”

Frigga studied him. “Who is he? This man that you while away the time with.”

“No one important.” Loki shrugged away her questions. He moved to put the book back on the ever growing pile of books that Frigga supplied him.

“He must mean something to you,” Frigga insisted.

“A lover. No more than that,” Loki answered quickly, hoping to end her questions.

“No more?” Frigga laughed softly, her smile widening. “There is much that you aren’t telling me, Loki.”

“And if there is?” Loki turned to face her, gesturing to the cell around him. “What does it matter now? I will rot in this cell; that is the will of the Allfather, is it not?”

“And if I could bring him here? This lover of yours.”

“No!” Loki shouted sharply. He stopped, closing his eyes and taking several deep breaths. “He is…it is long over. I doubt he even remembers me.”

Frigga smiled kindly. “You are not easily forgotten.”

“Please,” Loki began. He swallowed down the rest of the words that he might have said. It didn’t matter now. No one would believe him, not in Asgard or on Midgard. 

All he had left was to wait for Thanos to come.

He barely listened as Frigga spoke idly of the news of Asgard. He cared little for the welfare of those who had thrown him into a dungeon to wait for death. All he had done was to protect them. All he had left behind. For them.

“Loki,” Frigga said.

Loki realized that he had been staring out through the wall of his cell, completely oblivious to what Frigga had been saying. “I was distracted.”

She moved to his side, still watching him with lovely, sad eyes. “You miss him.”

Closing his eyes, Loki tried to muster a smile. “I ache for him.” He turned away from the wall, not able to meet her gaze. “But it cannot be.”

“Why not?”

He opened his hands to the room around them. “My sentence has been given. I am to spend the rest of my life in this cell. What future is that?”

“There is always a way.”

The bitter laugh slipped past his lips before he could stop it. He had believed there was a way to save Steve, and the rest of Midgard, as well as Asgard. All it had gotten him was a prison cell.

“You mustn’t give up hope, Loki.”

He’d heard that before. He kept his back turned to her and waited until he felt her leave. Sightlessly, he watched as more marauders were led to more cells. Peace would be won soon and the Nine Realms once again under Asgard’s control. 

“She loves you,” Steve said behind him.

Loki sighed heavily. The illusion of Steve appeared even when he wished it wouldn’t, as though drawn from his subconscious. “As much as any woman could love a monster brought home for her to raise.”

He wanted nothing more than to be able to turn around and return to the bed, to wrap his arms around Steve and forget everything around them. There were nights that the emptiness in the bed beside him felt as cold and final as Death herself. The casting of Steve, although visually perfect in every way, could not mimic the touch of skin or the heat of his breath; there was no heartbeat within his chest to let Loki know that Steve was alive. Alive, safe, and unaware of what Loki had taken from him.

“Would you forgive me?” he asked softly. “If you were to remember.”

“Of course I would. You know I would.”

It was cold comfort. The illusion was good, but only as good as Loki’s own hopes and dreams. He had no guarantee that even Steve would be able to forgive him. “You are better without me.”

“That’s not true. I want to be with you. Whatever it takes.”

The Captain’s certainty, his stubborn loyalty, was a mockery now. The comfort and the happiness Loki had found with Steve could only torment him here in this cell. He’d taken those memories away from Steve when what he truly wanted was to rip his own memories away and cast them out where they could no longer hurt him. 

His true punishment wasn’t a prison cell. It was the hollow image of blond hair and blue eyes lying on the bed behind him. He knew that when he turned around, Steve’s brow would be knit and his lips turned into a frown; he would appear to be worried over Loki.

The real punishment had nothing to do with the walls around him.

There was a smile on his face when he turned around, though the illusion of Steve would not care if he was smiling or not. He passed by the pile of books to collect the volume he had been reading before. “Where were we?”


End file.
